What theme..

Hi again, now I know I haven't posted in a while but I've run out of literary steam lately.. however I have something to talk about today.

Well, my rpg system got to version 1, then just got boring,I don't know why. So I was out of a project until I started talking to a friend about my concept of a "perfect" board game, and before I knew it I had basically given an outline for a game to make, and so I made it, tested it (digitally of course, I'm too cheap to print out something for test purposes only) and now I have the great looming question. What theme should my game have? I have allot to choose from, any thing that would work for an RTS can work my game.

so now the big question

what theme?

- ancient (hoplites, temples.. all that good stuff)
- medieval ( AOE knock off.. )
- fantasy ( dragons etc..)
- mythical ( AOM knock off...)
- modern (!!!???)
- sci fi (hail to the space marine!)

well, Ive got plenty of time to think about it, I have no rush and I mean NO rush to do this. The only motivating force here is passion, which is by far the best motivating force.

Well, Ive resorted to this

for lack anything useful to discuss, I'm forced to talk about the most dreaded subject, effectively turning this in to my public diary.

today I feel bored, summer is fine, but its only really good to fantasize about when your in school. Good news is most of my friends are back from holidays, which means I can now stop living on msn and go out and enjoy the world.

My mom got rid of my old, and very small bike, which leaves me with my my over priced and shiny BMX which I don't want to take anywhere and I'm afraid to lock up, so I'm on the search for a nice old bike for city travail, no gears, no shocks.. nothing fancy.. just a bike

well that's all the news in my life today... Enjoy!

Mind Body and Spirit

After Much discussion with my friend, Ive decided to do a complete overhaul of the rpg system, add stuff, simplify and in some cases completely change aspects of it. An interesting aspect that we plan to use is the describing of an individual as a combination of "Mind" "Body" and "Spirit". Yes, this is very cliche, but the fact is it simplifies things much more. Instead of having dexterity,intelligence etc.. A character is given a score for mind, body and spirit. Mind covers all things dealing Whit intelligence and intellect, body covers fitness, stamina and strength, while Spirit describes something a little more vague, its like a combination of personality, determination and initiative.

Any way, just thought it was interesting

Now back business, Ive decided to only blog when I having something useful to say, so it wont be consistently every day anymore, though I will try to get something out at least once a week.

Realism, why it doesnt work in multiplayer FPS's

Ok, I play CS, Wolfenstien, Halo 2 etc..

But why the hell cant someone make a realistic multi player fps?

Well I'll tell you why...

Ok lets first define the realism I'm talking about. When I say realism, I'm referring to the use of actual tactics being successful and things such as "flash bang" and "smoke grenade" used for something else besides pissing everyone off. Now why don't these tactics work? Well lets see what would happen in a normal game of CS if you employed some of them.

1) covering fire and pinning

All right you go and look over a crate to see some terrorists coming at you (your CT) some comrades charge at them (all ready unrealistic) you "cover them" by shooting in the general direction of the Terrorists, only to find that they keep coming, because unlike real individual, they don't value living, and not being hurt, and do not retreat to not get shot, they simply bet on the probability that they only have a 1/5 chance of getting killed by your fire, and there feeling lucky, or should I say "leet"

2) flanking

All right, this all ready cancels it self out because of number 1, if you cant pin an enemy, then they wont stay put, and cant be flanked and fixed.

3) smokes and flash bangs

This is possible in cs, but only barley, and only on certain maps. For it to work you need the enemy to travel in groups and you need to as well, a.k.a teamwork. Flash bangs and smokes don't work once you have people charging vigilante style ahead of you, and the enemy is doing the same, because when you throw a flash in a situation like that 50% of the time it blinds half your team as well as half of theirs, effectively pissing of everyone and putting you on your way to getting banned.

Why doesn't it work?

The key thing here is that these games are missing the "human element" Sure players are playing against real people, but if you die its no big deal and so "defencive action" is almost never taken, people need to fear something for them to hit the dirt or hide behind things.

Is this true of all games?

Interestingly enough, if you play CS with Bots instead of player, game play is much more realistic. Bots seem to value there "life" more then human players, and so they duck and work as a team.

So what can be done?

To be perfectly honest, I don't know, the best option would be to make a greater punishment for dieing then simply missing the rest of the round. What this punishment would be, I don't know ( I don't think a shock collar would be to popular with gamers) But as of right now, tactics are worth nothing compared to reflexes, I guess all us strategy gamers will just half to wait.

Forum Gaming

Cant think of much to write today... I decided to start a game on the forum today, its called "war world" basically a build'n'battle game with a vaguely modern theme. Its really hard to predict what will be a hit and what will be a miss with groups, of course record companies have been trying to do this for ages.dealing with a forum and watching it evolve over time gives you an interesting look at a microcosm society, except the resources which power it are not physical but intellectual, being ideas.

Wednesdays World Rant

Some of the most accommodating religions, as far as tolerance of local beliefs and customs go are polytheistic, that is have more then one god. Historically, most ancient polytheistic religion's gods varied widely from city to city and often Incorporated local gods and deities. Now when Christianity arose, along with the other monotheistic religions we know today, this tolerance disappeared, or did it?

Christianity is one of the most, if not the most wide spread monotheistic religion in the world, and a good chunk of those Christians are Catholic.Catholicism is the most accommodating form of Christianity, if not monotheism in general in this day and age. But is it really a monotheistic religion?

Obviously if you ask a Catholic they will tell you there is only one god, but if we widen our definition of god, or goddess, and we include subcategories such as demigods, then an interesting religious picture arises. We have God, who we can view as the head power, then we have his earthly emissaries, Mary and Jesus who people pray to for help, there not praying to god, they are praying to Jesus or Mary, effectively making Mary and Jesus demigods. Then we have the patron saints, these are like spirits, they look after a very precise area and so are prayed to for things within there jurisdiction, once again people are not praying to god to grant them luck in the mines today, they are praying to a saint who is jurisdiction is mining.

Now the place we see the most worship of saints is central and south America. Before the Europeans arrived and spread the word of "god" there was the Aztec, the Maya and Inca as well as the 1000s of smaller cultural groups, what did all these religions have in common? polytheism, so when Catholicism arrived it took hold and Incorporated many of the local beliefs, and now thanks to this, we can enjoy the the Christan blood cult we know as Mexican Catholicism. Now weather this is embraced by the pope or not is not important, its the fact that they identify themselves with it.

So whats this about? Catholicism rains supreme because of its ability to embrace and adopt local customs, and this is mainly possible because its core beliefs are basically polytheistic.

Now the real project begins..

I have come to the conclusion that writing the rpg system, is merely one piece of the puzzle to making the game, I now have to make the game world.

I think writing worlds, for some people is much easier then writing stories, in a story the world comes second to characters, plot and relationships. In a game world, this is what the players do, you must simply provide them with a outlet for there actions. I have attempted to write stories many times but even before I knew I was a game designer, I was preoccupied with the concept of "the setting" or in gaming terms, "the world". My characters were always hollow shells, that for the most part were there to describe and discover how the world worked.

Interestingly, my first "world" I created was a stone age reality known as "Trome" its was a simple name that meant "tree home" it was a primitive but Utopian society that had no war, and the only real violence that took place was between its inhabitants and wild animals. Later I wanted to write a story about it, but for that I felt I needed an evil power, someone to fight besides the omnipotent forces of Gaea. I created an evil wizard, who had millions of mindless soldiers of animated armour at his disposal. In response the people of Trome, and its

neighbouring countries Mushrom, Izome and Mudlaps took up arms. I never ended up writing the story, however the mere thought of war in the world, destroyed the Utopian aspect, and effectively killed it. I revisit it now, as a mental experiment

My rules are done!

well, I feel rather useful today, I actualy finished my rpg rules that have been in the works for a while. You Know I rarley finish projects I start, its kinda annoying realy.

Every idea starts with insperation, so lets say I watch a documentary on World War 2, suddenly and m1 garand is the coolest weapon in the world and your drooling at the concept of a ww2 miniture battle with your friend (as long as your friend saw the documntary)
Then you go over to the computer to write some ww2 rules, you type 1, 2, 3 pages and then you need a break. You turn on the TV, its the alien movie from the 80s, suddenly a flame thrower becomes the coolest weapon ever and the coolest nemisis is a drooling eyeless space monster. So what do you do? you run to the computer, you just have to write a game system for gaming an "Aliens" movie, your poor old ww2 rules never see the light of day again, that is until a rerun next july of the same ww2 documnatry floats your boat once again.

the moral of this story? finishing one thing is worth 10 times more then starting a ton of projects. You would not belive how many diffrent ideas look cool in one light, and look stupid another, a truly good idea can stand the test of time.

oooh! first post .. summer heat

hello everybody (if anyones out there)

This is my first blog post ever, dont realy know what to talk about..

well, lets just get on to buisness..

summer is nice, sorta but I think cold is better. For one thing, no matter how hard you try you can never realy cool down unless you jump in the ocean or somthing, and then its usualy too cold any way. Now fall, thats a time I can love, you can regulate your temerapture so easly, just take a jacket. But back to hot, what can you do if your in your boxers and nothing els, the AC's on and your still too hot, NOTHING!!

now that I said this, watch my local temperature brake a new record...

well what ever.. its all good